• Features
• 
  NASA/JPL/Caltech
• Salvaging NASA's Planetary Grand Tour: Sending Voyager 2 Where No Probe Had Gone Before--Or Since
  The twin Voyagers set the pace for planetary exploration. And although the technology on new probes far surpasses theirs, no spacecraft has yet explored more of the solar system and its interstellar environs

• Features
• 
  NASA
• Phobos-Grunt Probe to Put Microbial Life in Mars Orbit
  A tagalong to the Russian sample-return mission makes some researchers uncomfortable

• Features
• 
  NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest
• Target Europa: Ambitious Plans Aim for Jupiter's Ocean Moon
  NASA is planning to send an orbiter to Europa as part of an international fleet of probes slated to explore Jupiter's environs that may even include a landing on the intriguing moon

• Features
• 
  ESA/AOES Medialab
• 5 Future Robotic Expeditions and What They Could Reveal [Slide Show]
  Some are already on their way and some are still in the works, but here is what we may see from unmanned exploration of space in the coming years

 

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60-Second Science Blog
Opportunity rover finds possible meteorite on Mars
The indefatigable Opportunity rover, still motoring across the Red Planet five years into its mission, recently came across what may be a large meteorite sitting on the Martian surface

Science Talk
A Mars Rovers Once Over
We look at the state of the rovers currently on Mars, the big accidental discovery by the Spirit rover, and the next-generation device slated to join them in 2010, the Mars Science Laboratory Rover. Interviews with Cornell's Melissa Rice, the payload downlink lead for the rover cameras, and the Jet Propulsion Lab's Michelle Viotti, about the Mars Science Laboratory Rover. Also press conference clips featuring Cornell's Steve Squyres, principal investigator for the science instruments on the Mars Exploration Rover Mission, and Harvard's Andrew Knoll, a biologist with the Mars missions

Scientific American Magazine
Enceladus: Secrets of Saturn's Strangest Moon
Wrinkled landscapes and spouting jets on Saturn's sixth-largest moon hint at underground waters

60-Second Science Blog
NASA and ESA headed back to Jupiter's moons
NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA) unveiled their joint plans for exploring the outer planets, choosing to head to Jupiter and four of its moons before further exploring the moons of Saturn

News
Red (Planet) Alert: Massive Subsurface Glaciers Discovered on Mars
Surface-penetrating radar reveals features composed of ice, not rock

News
Moonstruck: Tagalong Probe to Blast Moon in Search for Water
The LCROSS spacecraft, launching next week, will impact the moon to see what flies up

60-Second Science Blog
Mars exploration rovers just keep going and going...
When NASA's Spirit and Opportunity rovers touched down on Mars, they were each tapped for three-month missions exploring the Red Planet--but five years later, both are still moving

Scientific American Magazine
Have Brain, Must Travel
These are incredibly exciting times for space exploration, with more than 50 robotic spacecraft studying Earth and reaching throughout the solar system. Still, many of us embrace human exploration as a worthy goal in its own right and as a critically important part of space science in the 21st century

News
Phoenix Gas Analyzer Confirms Water on Mars
NASA has confirmed that chunks of soil that vaporized on Mars after NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander dug them up really were water ice

SkyMania
Kaguya Moon crash seen from Earth
Astronomers using one of the world's largest telescopes captured the brilliant explosion as the Kaguya spacecraft slammed into the Moon

60-Second Science Blog
Sample-return mission pulls a building block of life from a comet
A NASA probe that ferried material from a comet to Earth appears to have brought back an amino acid from that encounter, bolstering a theory that life's precursors may have arrived on our planet from outer space

60-Second Science Blog
Cassini spacecraft spots a new moonlet in Saturn's rings
Recent images from the Cassini spacecraft point to a moonlet embedded in one of Saturn's outer rings

Ask the Experts
How do space probes navigate large distances with such accuracy and how do the mission controllers know when they've reached their target?
Jeremy Jones, chief of the navigation team for the Cassini Project at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, offers an explanation

Science Talk
Space For Both?--Human Vs. Robotic Space Missions
In this episode Cornell University astronomer Jim Bell talks about future space missions and why people need to be part of them. Bell is the leader of the team operating the color cameras on the Mars rovers, and the author of the book Postcards From Mars and of an opinion piece in the August issue of Scientific American on humans in space

60-Second Science Blog
Did the Phoenix lander spot liquid water on Mars?
A team of researchers analyzing images and data gathered by the now-defunct Phoenix spacecraft believes that the lander spotted liquid water on Mars, but even within the Phoenix science team, not everyone is convinced

Scientific American Magazine
Who Should Explore Space?
Robots vs. Humans: A Debate